Posted on 12/20/2005 7:54:38 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Fox News alert a few minutes ago says the Dover School Board lost their bid to have Intelligent Design introduced into high school biology classes. The federal judge ruled that their case was based on the premise that Darwin's Theory of Evolution was incompatible with religion, and that this premise is false.
As for variation, true. It doesn't always replicate accurately, but most often it does. But the chances for a mutation is not great (and a chance for a positive mutation even less likely). Using your theory of mutation, I can argue that if the most common bloodtype is O, then why isn't everybody O after over more than ten thousand years (estimated)? O would be the most logical to develop because it is a universal bloodtype for my specie.
Going back to your last statement:
Eventually, everyone in your line may have longer and longer fingers, and become a species of pianists or violinists that cannot breed with short-fingered plebes.
How do you know it won't recur if the DNA for short fingers is in either my mates or my own DNA?
Your are correct that as objectively formulated ID doesn't posit a specific deity... Christianity, Islam, or even Jefferson's "Nature's God" would fit the bill. But they all appeal to the super natural, and hence are religious versus scientific.
And while ID isn't objectively Xian, read the judges opinion for very substantial evidence that at least in the Dover case, ID was used by Xians to further what they consider Xian ends.
http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf
Did you not bother to read the pleadings of each side in this case? If you had, you will discover that the Law Firm representing the Dover School Board (a firm that sought a "test case" on ID) made no such argument. Can you guess why? Because legally, the argument is rubbish. See next paragraph for elaboration.
Did you also not attend Civics Class when they discussed the 14th Amendment, and the effect it has on application of the 1st Amendment? I believe the legal phrase is "incorporation" -- a doctrine upheld by the Supreme Court that incorporates most of the Bill of Rights and applies them to state and local government. You may not like incorporation, you may have a legal argument against it, but it is a moot point, because for the present, the Supreme Court says that's what the 14th amendment means. That's why the religiously motivated law firm representing the religiously motivated School Board members chose to NOT make the argument you are proffering -- it won't fly, because it is contrary to well-established Constitutional law.
I see no constitutional authority for a federal court to usurp the authority of the local school board in order to require the teaching of one "theory" over another.
No one said it "required the teaching" of anything; what it did say, in part, is this:
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
What do I care, I don't support teaching ID in science classes.
I just don't like seeing judges make stupid laws into constitutional issues. We have a constitutional right to have stupid laws. We can vote out the people who write stupid laws.
Note that the Dover school board members who started this were all voted out of office. I would imagine that the new school board would have thrown out this policy without any bidding from an activist court.
Let's see, you say one is a theory and the other is a theory! Where do you stand on theories? They are just that....theories! Nothing absolute on either count!
No you've got it entirely the wrong way around. Even with testing it remains a theory just like every other scientific theory. ID is not a theory. Fot it to be a theory, you need to show some predictions that it makes of future observable data and some way in which it can be falsified.
You mean like the smoking gun proof that many primate species, including humans, once had common ancestors millions of years ago?
It exists in the several thousand Endogenous Retro Virus DNA sequences that co-exist in genomes of these various species. ERV viruses insert their DNA into host DNA in random places, and on very rare events, that viral DNA is passed down to descendents. When we find such sequences in more than one species, it is proof that a single individual got a virus millions of years ago, and passed it to both species via evolution.
There are many more things these sequences tell us, such as the time since the species split (which conforms to morphological evidence dating).
You can argue against this. The OJ jury certianly did. But I wouldn't
I'm not arguing that ID should be taught in science class. I was just arguing that the facts used to support evolution would not necessarily be incompatable with a 7-day creation by an all-powerful diety.
And further I'm arguing that there is no constitutional prohibition against bad laws, or teaching false science. I can't go to court to get my history courses ruled unconstitutional because they teach liberal heresy.
"What does "Intelligent Design THEORY" explain?"
The origins of life, which evolution simply cannot.
A "scientific theory" is not the same thing as a "theory". Dr Behe, leading science witness for the *defence* in the Dover trial agreed under oath that ID is not a scientific theory. Therefore the judge has ruled, entirely appropriately, that it should not be taught in science class, which is where scientific theories are taught, not just any old theory.
I apologize for the suggestion that Anti-Gov was vested in, or had any reason to want to, destroy religion.
I was merely using his post as an illustration of how evolution was used by those who DID want to do so.
Please accept my apology for the error.
Intelligence is not necessarily personal....the definition is far broader.
An intelligence is any "organizing principle."
So natural selection, i.e. the phenomena that favors organisms within a population that enjoy an advantage due to a genetic mutation that results in enhanced chances of propagating their genes over members of that population that do not have the particular advantage, should qualify for your definition of ID. That being the case, what difference is there between ID and the ToE?
And you, LurkingLibertarian, have put the last nail in the coffin about the supposed trio Stalin/Marx/ Darwin the creationists like to trot out as evidence of ?(I am not sure what their point is, and I dont think they have any point other than to link Darwins name with the 'bad' guys so that Darwin will also be 'bad')
First Highball, CarolinaGuitrman; and Dimensio crush the argument about the supposed link between Marx and Darwin..
Now you, LL, have pointed out the actions of Stalin regarding the banning of the teaching of Darwinism, and having DArwinian biologists sent to the gulag..
These evo/ID threads are highly entertaining, often good for a laugh, but also, and more importantly, these threads are extremely valuable for unmasking lies, and while unmasking the lies, providing valuable scientific and historical evidence...
This gives to us posters and lurkers with a more limited knowledge on the subject of evo/ID, the ability to see when someone is making things up, or actually has some facts and evidence to back up their claims...
Many thanks to all of you...
What does the Darwinian THEORY explain! They are theories! You speak of predictions and hypotheses! Aren't those guesses?
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